A design option for vehicles with sliding doors, particularly vans, positions a sliding door on the same side of the vehicle as the fuel filler pipe access lid. Such a design raises the possibility of a collision between the sliding door and the filler pipe access lid if the access lid is open for refueling and the sliding door is subsequently opened. Two mechanisms to obviate this potentiality, based on sliding door track lockout mechanisms, were disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,454,618 (Sullivan) and patent application Ser. No. 08/368,946, both assigned to the assignee of the present application and incorporated by reference herein. These door track lockout mechanisms operate by having a stop member and a link, respectively, mounted for alternate movement into and out of a door track to obstruct and unobstruct movement of the sliding door rollers therethrough.
Other mechanisms for preventing an undesirable collision between a door and a fuel filler access lid are shown in Japanese patent 103,511 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,620,744 (Yui, et al.). A drawback of the former approach is that the door will cause chipping, nicking, and denting of the access lid upon collision therewith thus degrading vehicle external appearance. The latter mechanism requires opening the fuel filler lid and then pulling a lever to lock-out the sliding door, an inconvenient extra step. In addition, the mechanism only allows the door to open a short way and also requires many parts which increase both manufacturing expense and assembly time.